


Oil and Rocks

by thehomefucker



Category: DRAMAtical Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-05
Updated: 2014-11-05
Packaged: 2018-02-24 04:09:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2567696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehomefucker/pseuds/thehomefucker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was always behind him. Just a few steps off. Twin tails tangled, chilled to rigor mortis and fanned. Hands poised like pointed pins. Looking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oil and Rocks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Uusui](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Uusui).



> Suggested listening: Song of Healing (Majora’s Mask), "Princess Luna" Come Little Children, Hide and Seek (Imogen Heap)

As a manifestation of his many projections, Usui was a permanent resident in Sei’s white-walled will. A totem of his mind, tall as the titanium tower that trapped him; stoic in his periphery. Gleaming through a mask of soot. Tarnished. Ugly as oil, a figure as ominous as the space before time.

When she first formed, materialized as a ratty-haired thorn-at-his side, Sei tried to run. Made himself evanescent; though the vast expanse of his own blank consciousness left little unexposed. Even the fortified shelters he built were razed, infiltrated as easy as air.

She was always behind him.

Just a few steps off. Twin tails tangled, chilled to rigor mortis and fanned. Hands poised like pointed pins.

Looking.

Bound by her omniscience, he allowed Usui to stay—it was  **his**  mind, after all, and he could eject whomever he pleased with enough effort—if only at a considerable distance.

And that was how they got on for many years. Sei huddled in a tattered curl, eclipsed by her shadow. A shivering shell darkened by chaos, by blood-colored agony, by constant surveillance. As reality stabbed and tore and gouged and fucked him dry of every fluid, Sei dove further within himself. Closed his consciousness within the bright abyss, resigning to the lesser of all evils:

Usui.

She’d never harmed him, he could admit. Her sallow stare, corpse-like and milky, was just a bit soft, like mist clinging to a valley’s edge. Maybe there was something to the tilt of her lashes as she watched him, crumpled, thin. Or he was losing it. That could be the case, too. The tubes, purpling viper-marks up his arms, forced toxins into and out of him, injected madness with his heart’s every pump. It made him hallucinate.

Made him ambivalent toward her.

Made Sei hold his breath so he could hear her voice, bubbling out from her mouth like an unstopped spring. And when she bent to touch him, he did not shudder. He had learned long ago not to flinch.

She gathered him in her many arms: two sets below, cradling him steady; another at his face, soothing his hair, nuzzling his cheek; while the final pair punctuated her aria with careful charade. She was warm without any flicker of movement inside her.

It became routine. When escaped in his head, he’d crawl on his hands to her legs and she would tend to him. Kiss his forehead. Clutch him to her breast; the slave encircled in the arms of the chaste Madonna built from his own blood. She, a fearsome deity, bathed him in myrrh, murmuring over him in half-lidded tranquility.

In time, her simple baritone became a blend of many voices. A loping male tenor. A female soprano. A canned flanging from deep within her gold mechanics. Though his mind had given her birth, she became his Kali, benevolent, maternal, shining like a blue stone.

Within her songs, Usui wove him whispered fairytales, dreams of Prince Papillion, the valored knight with gilded eyes and sky-kissed hair. She trilled his taming of the beast, rage-red and snarling, or how he taught the tinman to love. If pressed enough, she’d recount the Prince’s wild, intoxicated youth with a particular pixie, which Sei found endlessly charming.

But in the end, no matter the route, Prince Papillion always saved the captive Princess.

He never failed.

“Will Prince Papillion always rescue her?” Sei asked, words staggered between wheezes.

Yes.

She closed his eyes with a touch of her lips.

“I’m glad.”


End file.
